In the 1960s, Ken Shoulder proposed ideas based on field emission arrays (FEAs) electron beam microelectronic devices, thus, to design and produce panel display and light resource devices by using FEAs has drawn the public's attention. Similar to the working principle of conventional cathode-ray tube (CRT), such new field emission display lights and forms images by electron beam bombarding on red, green blue trichromatic luminescent powders. Field emission display has potential advantages in luminance, visual angle, response time, working temperature range, power consumption and other aspects.
A key factor to preparation of field emission display of high performances is to prepare luminescent material of excellent performance. At present, luminescent materials used in field emission devices are sulfide series, oxide series and oxysulfide series luminescent powders. As for sulfide series and oxysulfide series luminescent powders, they have relatively high luminance and electrical conductivity, but, under the large electron beam bombardment, they prone to decomposing into sulfur, which can poison the tip of cathode and produce other precipitates covering the luminescent powders, thus reducing the luminous efficiency of luminescent powders. Oxide and silicate luminescent powders have good stability but the luminous efficiency is not high enough yet.